“M’lord,” Nyndstir said, bowing a little deeper this time. “Good t’serve,” he added, thinking that if he were actually serving Lionel Delondeur—whose grip was not too diminished with age, the Islandman thought—he might have more of a stomach for all this.
“The horses, Landen,” the Baron ordered lightly. “And round up their draft animals,” Nyndstir heard him say, as he walked off. “We need to cart our wounded over to this camp.”
Nyndstir felt a cold tightness in the muscles of his belly, looked at the sack of bones and metal at his feet, and found that his stomach for any of it had just about died.
* * *
The rest of the day had been quiet, to Allystaire’s surprise. The Goddess’s song receded but did not vanish. He saw to the wounded and the dead, silently thanking the Goddess for how few in number the latter were, then walked a circuit of the wall with Renard and Idgen Marte in silence.
As they walked, Allystaire was struck by how small the size of the ground they had chosen was. But then, Thornhurst was no true crossroads; just the space where the barony road rose towards its meeting the old High Road as it paralleled the Ash. The inner village held just over a score of buildings, closely built upon one another, where the road really began its upward sweep. There were no points within the boundary of the walls where he couldn’t see the stone oval of the Temple.
Near the end of their circuit, he stopped, faced the Temple, and took a heavy breath. Let me be equal to this, Goddess, he prayed. However it must end, let me meet it well. Let all of us.
He felt a sharp rap of Idgen Marte’s knuckled fist upon his armor, and turned to face her, finding her eyes hard and her face sharp. “Enough of that,” she muttered.
Renard, leaning upon his spear, heaved a small sigh. “That’s odd, you know. Unsettling. When any of you five start talking in your heads and answer aloud.”
Allystaire turned a quizzical eye on the bearded veteran. “You know of this?”
“’Course I do. Mol told me. Cold, she showed me once. She can speak to any of us that way. I’d wager she can speak to anyone she likes in their mind.”
“Can she hear them answer?”
“Aye,” Renard answered, nodding faintly, his coif clinking lightly against his mail coat. “Said she’d only do it at need, that most of us weren’t prepared for it, could hurt us. Only you lot could truly stand it, something about the touch of the Mother upon your minds.”
“Renard,” Allystaire said, drawing a step closer to him and raising a hand as if to clap him on the shoulder, only to see the canny old soldier back up.
Then, grinning, Renard said, “I’ll take my chances with the Delondeur troops and the patchwork monsters, but I’ve no wish to see my shoulder crushed to rubble because you got maudlin, Arm.”
Allystaire and Idgen Marte both laughed. Allystaire’s mouth quickly drew back into a line and the mirth that briefly flared in his dark blue eyes vanished altogether. “Renard, if there is a way to get some of the folk out, to escape before this draws to its end, I want you to leave with Leah. A man with a child coming has obligations greater than any other.”
“Don’t you tell me what my obligations are,” Renard said, with sudden heat creeping into his voice. “I’ll be staying right here, child or no.”
“Renard—”
“Don’t,” the man said, shaking his head sharply from side to side. “I decided to follow you those months ago—seems like more than months—regardless o’where it took me. I was puttin’ silver in my purse, but a man can’t live on silver, not and feel like a man. And when you called me out on what I was doin’ in front o’that fat man’s toybox, well, I felt shame like I never had. And I thought, well, I’m done taking that greasy silver. Decided I’d rather see where a man like you was goin’. A man with naught more than I had, arms, armor, will to use them, a better horse maybe, standing alone in front of a man with spears at his command, and a priest with a bully of a God behind him, and tellin’ ‘em no.” Renard’s gruff voice made the word somehow triumphant. He went on after a breath.
“Maybe they were petty lords, but they were men used to forcing their way, like the bastard slaver outside is, and you wouldn’t let ‘em have it.” He didn’t wait for Allystaire to nod before rolling on. “And now I know what you are, and what she is,” he said, pointing at Idgen Marte, “and Torvul, and Gideon, and Mol, well, now I’m not going anywhere. Not because I think it’s grand to be part of a story bein’ born, though mayhap I’ll look back and think it so some day. Lords and heroes alone don’t win a battle, yeah?” He paused again, wetting his lips.
“Someone else has got to do the little work, the organizin’, the shoutin’, the cursin’. Other folk, folk not blessed with Her Gifts, have got t’be willing to look at the bastards who own everything and want more still, and tell them no the way you told the fat baron and the Choiron. Maybe all I got is this,” he said, hefting his spear and butting the bottom of the shaft against the ground. “For the first time in all the years I been carryin’ it, I can know for cert I’m usin’ it on the better side o’the fight, for somethin’ more than silver. For the first time, maybe the only time, I’m fighting for my own home, my wife, my child, all things I’d not have if not for the Goddess. You don’t get to take that fight away from me, paladin or not.”
The soldier’s defiant outburst hung in the air a moment, till Idgen Marte stepped forward and took his arm in hers. “Brother of Battle,” she said quietly, and he echoed her, a faint flush in his cheeks.
“Renard,” Allystaire said softly, “I have known dozens of knights and lords whose deeds minstrels sing of, men in glittering armor on horses whose bloodlines make Ardent look like a nag, with every manner of axe and sword and mace and hammer made to their own hands by master smiths. And there are none of them I would rather have next to me than you.”
“Fine,” Renard said, rolling his shoulders beneath his mail and shifting his eyes from one to the other of them. “Can we stop all this rot and get back t’work now?”
Allystaire and Idgen Marte laughed and resumed their walk. When they reached the north-facing gate, Renard moved off to resume his post and talk to his militiamen. Idgen Marte started to head towards the scaffold, and then paused and looked back.
“Should you be posted here in case the Battle-Wights come back?”
“No guarantee they will come back to this gate. They could attack either gate, or both. We need to get the men some cudgels, staves, maces—anything heavy. I cannot be everywhere, and if we face more than eight or ten, or they attack in two places…” He trailed off, shrugging.
“I can borrow Torvul’s head-knocker,” Idgen Marte replied. “Gather up stones and…”
“…drop them from the top of the wall? Let the fall do the work for us,” Allystaire said, nodding approvingly. “Can you get up a party for it?”
She nodded, glanced to the wall, and then back to him, resting a hand upon her hip. “We’re going t’need Gideon,” she muttered.
“I know,” Allystaire said, nodding slowly and biting the inside of his cheek. “I cannot imagine that the Goddess would let him be taken now.”
“I don’t think She’s got anything to do with it.” She toed the ground and kicked at a frosted clot of dead grass. “I like to think She has a plan, or a goal—but She told us herself that none of it is fated, none of it is destined. Whatever happens, we have to make it happen. And pay the costs.”
“Gideon cannot be the cost. Not now. Idgen Marte, She told me in the chapel, during the vigil—the order She Called us, it mattered. We are…” He grimaced, searching for the words. “I think we are the phases of light in its struggle with the darkness of night. Mol at the very fall of twilight. You, at the darkest time, when light exists only in shadows. And Gideon…”
“Is like unto the dawn,” Idgen Marte said, echoing the Goddess’s words. “I know.”
> “Well, if dawn is to come then it is up to us to pass through the night. The Longest Night.”
“That’ll be in the next day or two. If I’m any judge.”
“Gideon thought so, apparently.”
“Knowing him, he’s likely right. Anyway, why haven’t you northern barbarians a decent horologist or star-gazer about to know these things for certain? And your seasons, your damned longer winter and summer. You people don’t know a proper spring here.”
“I am sure the Rhidalish kings employed one or two such men, and I am equally sure they took a good look at the start of the Succession Strife forty years ago and scarpered off back to wherever they came from.”
She waved a hand in the air dismissively. “Back to the watch with you. I’ll be listening for any word,” she added, tapping the side of her head.
Allystaire made quick work of the walk back to the other gate. Stretching his muscles gave some vent to the song that pulsed in them, but what he knew he wanted—what the song wanted, what his Gift wanted—was an enemy and room to swing.
Too soon he was back on the scaffold, and equally too soon the sun had all but vanished. Torvul was nowhere to be found, so Ivar had the wall, along with a thin scattering of Ravens. The mercenary captain kept her eyes staring off down the road, where a few burnt out farmstead buildings were visible as shadowed hulks from the glow of campfires as the Baron’s men bivouacked among them.
“Ivar, what is it that you do not approve?”
“Not my place to approve,” she said, with a shrug of her mailed shoulders. “I’m a hired spear only.”
“Nonsense. We have too much history to—”
“History you’ve forgotten,” Ivar said, lofting a gob of spit over the wall. “The Allystaire Coldbourne I followed never would’ve cornered himself at bad odds. Never would’ve chosen t’believe fool notions of goddesses and defendin’ peasants,” she added, heat rising in her voice.
“The man you followed is dead, Ivar,” Allystaire said, his voice calm and even. “There is no more Allystaire Coldbourne.”
“Oh, and don’t I freezin’ know it,” the woman replied with a vicious laugh.
“You took my sister’s weight and agreed to serve.”
“I know Cold-damned well what we signed on to. We just didn’t know who we were signin’ with. We’ll stay here and die for our silver ‘cause that’s what we’re expected to do, aye? That’s what we were always expected to do, even in the old days when you didn’t take airs you weren’t born to.”
“I cannot make you believe and I will force no man to profess my faith. If what you have seen with your own eyes cannot convince you, nothing I say will. I know you are not a coward or a traitor, Ivar, so I will not warn you against it.” He took a deep breath and went on. “If we are to die here, at least I know I am not doing it for silver.”
“I don’t want t’die here at all,” Ivar said. “Not in Delondeur. In Oyrwyn, maybe. Innadan if I must. But here?” She spat again, shaking her head all the while. Then she grabbed her spear and walked off down the scaffold, turning her back to Allystaire.
Allystaire sighed and looked out over the walls towards the distant camp, but only for a moment, as he heard the tramp of Torvul’s heavy boots behind him.
“They sent men t’ collect the parts of those monsters y’destroyed,” Torvul grumbled. He leaned, sagged really. His eyes closed. Then he pulled himself upright and took in a deep breath of air. “I got two o’them,” he said, patting the crossbow that was slung across his barrel chest. “Third got away. Talkative sort. Things were different, seemed like he might not be a bad man.”
“He is on the wrong side of the wall till he surrenders,” Allystaire said. “How much did he get away with—and what can they do with it?”
“A right heavy bagful, and I’m not certain. Make more of their Wights, I s’spose.”
“You know of these things?”
“Have read about, never seen,” Torvul replied. “It’s a practical thing, I guess, if awful.”
“What do you mean?”
“What are two things no battlefield is ever going to run short of? Corpses and broken bits of metal,” he said, answering his own question. “You make the one remember what it was to be a man and the other what it was to be a weapon and then you fuse ‘em together into one awful whole.”
“Any thoughts on how to fight them?”
“Funnel ‘em your way?” Torvul stopped a moment, cocked his head to one side as if listening to some distant voice. “I…no. Not just now I don’t. There was a time when my folk contended with sorcerers, or so the lore is sung. I’ve not the weapons or the knowledge. I’m sorry.”
“Not just now? Meaning you did once, or you might?”
“I told you that’s how the lore is sung. Ya remember anything I’ve told ya about my people, ya’d know some of what that means. My magic, such as it is, the craft of it—it is nothing to what my folk could once do. I would be among the meanest of apprentices to the truly gifted. They were artists to give sorcerers pause,” the dwarf said wistfully, his eyes drifting off towards the distant camp.
“Artists?”
“If something is worth doing it ought to be done beautifully,” Torvul said, then waved a dismissive, frustrated hand. “Enough, Allystaire. I haven’t the time to try to explain. Unless I were very lucky and came upon him unawares, I don’t think I have what’s needed t’fight a sorcerer on my own.”
“Then we need Gideon.”
“Aye. I went to see the boy while you were walking the interior. I’ve got no potions that’ll touch him, I fear. If Mol can’t reach him…”
“He is not dead, and he is not gone. Not forever.”
Torvul didn’t answer. He lifted his crossbow and flipped up one of the crystals, sighting down it. “Looks quiet for now. Think it’ll keep?”
“Not all night. No reason you cannot grab some rest.”
“There’s every reason. A moment spent asleep right now is a moment wasted.”
“Fine,” Allystaire said, dropping his voice. “We need to prepare a fallback position, and get all the folk inside the walls ready to move into it.”
“The Temple,” Torvul said. “It’s the only building they’ll all fit in. Not likely they can get a fire hot enough to burn the stone. Might be the sorcerers could.”
“What can we do to shore it up?”
The dwarf sighed heavily. “Makeshift barricades, I suppose. I can do some work on the doors, bless them—”
“Bless them?”
“Are you going daft on me again? Didn’t I just say that?”
“What good will blessing them do?”
“You’ve got your Gifts, boy, and I’ve got mine. I’ll explain when I have to.”
“Fine. Get up a working party. I have the wall.”
“This’sll help with watching the night.” The dwarf reached into a pouch and removed a familiar potion bottle, motioning to Allystaire to hold out his hand. “The other one,” Torvul groaned, when Allystaire held out his right hand. The dwarf carefully squeezed a few drops onto Allystaire’s bare palm, dipped a finger into them, and motioned again, indicating that Allystaire should bend down.
The drops were carefully massaged into the skin around Allystaire’s eyes. When he opened them, the night was already growing lighter and clearer.
“Lady be with you,” Torvul said, and then trudged off. His first two steps were taken wearily, slowly, but as he descended the ladder he seemed to gain strength and speed, and Allystaire heard his voice booming as he moved on, calling out names.
Allystaire narrowed his eyes as he looked in the direction of the Delondeur camp. He felt weariness creeping into his limbs, and a yawn cracking wide his jaw. He looked to the sky; it was heavily clouded, with little star or moonlight. For a moment he thought he saw a shadow passing across it, b
ut it was just as quickly gone.
He lowered his head and closed his eyes, trying to push his thoughts into the world surrounding him. Gideon? The thought was aimed nowhere, everywhere.
There was no answer, not even a ghost of one, not even a sign that he’d been heard. We’re going to need you, Gideon. We cannot do this without you. It will take the five of us, together, to do the work the Mother set us.
He tilted his head to the sky, slowly opening his eyes. It was brighter yet than it had been, but shadows teased at the corners of his vision.
He let his eyes slowly unfocus as he lowered them to the ground.
Then, much too close to the wall, he saw shadows, man-shaped shadows, flitting among the bare trees.
He stared a moment, and his vision focused and brightened even further. Wearing dark grey cloaks and carrying ropes with hooks tied to the end, a party of men, perhaps a dozen, moved with careful swiftness on the walls. They didn’t make a sound that wasn’t covered by the normal sounds of the night, the wind, horses picketed nearby.
His first instinct was to raise an alarm, and he was filling his lungs with a deep breath to do just that, when he suddenly went silent, tried to look calm, dragged his eyes away from the surreptitious forms.
Idgen Marte. Check your frontage. A dozen men are advancing on this gate with rope and hook, trying to go unseen.
And you saw them? He could feel the mockery even in her thoughts, and smiled at the sense of relieved mirth it brought him.
Torvul’s potion helped.
Our frontage is clear. Renard has lanterns out, and men patrolling the walls in pairs with Torvul’s flare bottles. I’m coming to you.
Ideas?
Allow me to show them what Shadows mean to the Mother.
* * *
Moments later, Idgen Marte was crouching at the farthest end of the scaffolding in a pool of darkness so impenetrable that even with Torvul’s potion, Allystaire could only feel her there, not see her.
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